Issues

Innovation and Economic Growth

Researchers today are trying to understand how information technology affects innovation, productivity, and economic growth while studying the impact of political and legal ground rules. Academics featured here are looking at the potential to create jobs and keep policymakers aware of emerging trends in technology.

Research Articles

In recent decades, technology increased productivity but reduced the number of manufacturing jobs. Historically, at times, jobs are gained when productivity improves. If automation increases the demand for a product, automation will increase the number of available jobs in that sector.

In future, health care outcomes will be guided by a learning healthcare system, which uses data from patients to evaluate treatments. Some data derived in clinical settings might be of low quality. The FDA now evaluates more treatments using data collected after the treatment begins to be used.

Machine learning is now being used in the criminal justice system. Because these systems focus on accuracy of prediction and ignore factors that drive crime, they can exacerbate problems of mass incarceration and inequality.

Economic growth arises when people create ideas. Evidence from a wide range of industries, products, and firms shows that while the number of researchers in increasing, their productivity is falling. Large increases in research will offset its declining productivity.

Analysis of the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) technology emphasizes AI’s effect on jobs. AI systems are likely to displace workers slowly; if so, the overall effect of AI on jobs will be minimal. Some support the idea of a universal basic income to aid workers displaced from jobs by AI.

Technological changes now enable employers to track the movement of employees inside and outside the workplace. The law has not changed to respond to this new type of surveillance. The loss of workers’ privacy is harmful in itself; worker privacy should be considered a civil right.

Scholarly journals charge libraries high prices for access to academic articles. Activists protest such restrictions on access to knowledge. Some hoped that the Internet would improve access to academic publishing, but this effect is limited.

Do patents benefit society by spurring innovation, or just enable some firms to profit? So far, the evidence does not show that disclosure of inventions in the patent process or stronger patent protection spur innovation. More research is needed.

Machines that can actually think are referred to as strong Artificial intelligence (AI). The First Amendment might protect speech by strong AI. Courts focused on the value of speech to listeners and the need to constrain government power will be sympathetic to this view.

Transactional records are important to business, but today’s transactions are often slow and costly. Blockchain will make it possible for businesses to verify transactions cheaply and quickly. Blockchain can provide substitutes for ordinary currency and financial services.

“Health Information Technology” or Health IT encompasses a wide range of hardware and software products used by patients, doctors, pharmacies, hospitals, insurers or other participants in the healthcare ecosystem to process and store data and communications related to health care.

"Those with unfettered access to your data, and especially those whose usage of your own data you cannot inquire about or limit, have power over you." — Alessandro Acquisti, Professor of Information Technology and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University